The novel opens with fifteen-year-old Alexander Cold awakening from a nightmare in which an enormous black bird carries his mother away. Alex lives on the California coast with his doctor father, John, his younger sisters, Andrea and Nicole, and his artist mother, Lisa. Lisa is very sick with cancer and spends much of her time in treatment, leaving John—who can’t cook anything besides pancakes that “always turned out like rubber-tire tortillas” (3)—to care for the house and children. As revealed through close 3rd-person narration, Alex believes that his family is falling apart and that even their house looks sad.

After a difficult morning with his unhappy family, Alex gets to school and realizes that he left his flute, which he needs to play a solo at orchestra practice, back at his house. He returns home at lunchtime to retrieve the flute and discovers his father shaving his mother’s head in their bedroom, while his mother weeps at the loss of her hair. After initially attacking his father upon seeing the razor, Alex barricades himself in his room and, overcome with a “hurricane of feelings” (9), he destroys all of his possessions, cutting his hand in the process. 

When Alex’s parents discover his ruined room, he apologizes to them and confesses how upset he is to his father.